


Our Indoor Voices

by jerry_duty



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Banter, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-31
Updated: 2018-08-31
Packaged: 2019-07-05 02:42:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15854580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jerry_duty/pseuds/jerry_duty
Summary: Morning, overcast, wet with the intent of snow. The lieutenant straggled into the precinct at fifteen past eleven. He had a headache, but that was Friday morning for you. The natural consequence of drinking half a bottle of rum with a gun at your hand. Read all about it in next month’s NatGeo.“Good morning, lieutenant,” said Connor, you know, the android sent by CyberLife.(Connor talks loudly. Hank caffeinates.)





	Our Indoor Voices

**Author's Note:**

> Just goofing around with voices. I'd like to expand this some day soon. Think of it as a pilot sketch for "Hank and Connor's buddy cop show where the events of the game don't take place over a grand total of like four days, what the hell @ David Cage."

Morning, overcast, wet with the intent of snow. The lieutenant straggled into the precinct at fifteen past eleven. He had a headache, but that was Friday morning for you. The natural consequence of drinking half a bottle of rum with a gun at your hand. Read all about it in next month’s NatGeo.

“Good morning, lieutenant,” said Connor, you know, the android sent by CyberLife. 

Hank warded him off with the overpriced coffee he’d bought down the street. The android ignored this. He liked to walk in step with Hank, with about a millimeter of breathing room between them.

“There’s a couple leads I’d like to go over with you, on the Santarelli deviant case.”

“Not our case.” The lieutenant ducked his head and hurried toward his desk. “Plus, it wasn’t a murder, just a runaway.”

“An android cannot run away.” Connor followed him. “Not of its own volition. I believe that it’s related to our investigation.”

“Now you gotta snipe cases from, what—” Hank squinted at Connor. He did not so much sit as collapse into his chair. The suspension sagged. Fowler had declined Hank’s last requisition for a new chair, citing “it’s your own damn fault for kicking the thing into the wall.”

Hank gave up. “I don’t know. Missing persons? Theft? What the hell’s it under?”

The android looked squirrelly. “Technically,” said Connor, “it’s theft.”

“What’s this technically about? Aren’t you the one who keeps yammering about how they’re not people, they’re machines?”

The android looked squirrelly-er. “They are machines. And,” he went on, before he could have any life- or, what, program-altering epiphanies, “it’s… _technically_ … the seventh precinct’s case.”

Hank put his coffee down. He put his elbows on the desk. He put his head in his hands. His fingers dug in deep in his scalp. 

He said, “It’s not our precinct.”

“Yes,” said the android.

“Santarelli,” said the lieutenant, “is the seventh.”

“Yes,” said the android.

“Could you say something other than ‘yes.’”

Connor thought about this. The lieutenant could see in very high definition in his brain the exact look that would be oh so very faintly furrowing Connor’s goofy, square face right now. His eyes might even dart. 

“Yes,” Connor concluded.

Hank muttered to his palms, “I’m starting to think you’re a motherfucking deviant.”

“Please don’t say that, lieutenant,” said Connor.

Dragging his hands down his – old, skin loose, eye bags you could fit a couple elephants in – face, Hank eyed him over his fingertips.

Connor had a dry look to him. If anyone were to ask the lieutenant to explain how he could tell, he would struggle then say it was something about the curl of his eyebrow. Designed for integration or not, the android lacked what you could call _facial expressivity_.

“I would hate to be arrested.” Connor planted a hand on the corner of Hank’s desk. He leaned in, _Detroit Confidential_. “I have a clean criminal record.”

Hank rubbed at his nose. He said, “If you’re trying to keep it between us, that you’re such a goody two-shoes, maybe don’t yell it.”

The android did not frown. The angle of his brow shifted. Maybe that was a trick of the light. He’d tipped his head very slightly. That insouciant Clark Kent curl fell nearly across his eye.

“But I’m not yelling.”

“Let me put it like this.” Hank mimed twisting a nipple. “If you got a volume dial, then turn it down.”

Connor looked at Hank. The LED flickered yellow. He said, “Ah. You’re hungover. That’s the fourth time this week.”

“When’s the week start for you?” muttered Hank.

“CyberLife’s calendars start the week on Sunday.”

“Then make it five.”

“Lieutenant,” said Connor, “I am concerned for your liver. Have you heard of water?”

“Have you heard of a soft whisper?”

Connor looked at him again for a longer moment. There was something to be said about a public relations approved handsome android looking at a man, and that something was if he didn’t knock it off Hank was going to bust him in the street.

“If you’re scanning my organs, quit it,” said Hank. He cupped his forehead again. “Let a man have his fucking dignity.”

“May I make a personal observation?”

“No.”

“Drinking alone encourages you to drink more,” said Connor. “People say social drinking is a more likely cause of binging. But for you…” His eyes wandered elsewhere. Then his attention returned unerring to the lieutenant. “Maybe after work we could go for drinks. You and me. What do you say?”

“I say,” said Hank, standing slowly with a hand splayed on the desk before him, “you gotta stop shouting my business to the whole precinct.”

“My voice is within normal decibel range for a personal conversation,” Connor informed him. He tipped his chin in and looked up through his artfully uneven spray of artificial lashes at Hank. “And besides. Everyone already knows you’re a habitual drunk.”

It was the lieutenant’s turn to look for a long moment at Connor. Connor made an inquisitive sound. A man who tended to assign human characteristics to toasters and expensive copier machines might think Connor did this to tease him. That man was the lieutenant. He was correct.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Hank admitted. He sat down again and grabbed his coffee. “But you’re still too god damn loud.”

The LED cycled. Connor sat himself on the outside corner of Hank’s desk, opposite Hank’s chair. The computer monitor was between them. Connor leaned in once more, nearer now than before. His eyes were very brown. The committee that designed him had found that brown eyes instigated feelings of comfort, warmth, friendliness. To Hank, who was caught looking back into those eyes at a distance of just about five inches, they magnified the symptoms of dehydration. His heart hiccoughed. 

Connor murmured, “Is this volume better?” in a low voice that still sounded as if he’d too much empty space in his mouth.

The lieutenant felt his nape heating. Fucking hangover sweats. Hank gulped his coffee. His tongue complained. He lowered the cup.

“Hey, better idea,” said Hank, around his burnt tongue, “maybe just turn the whole thing off.”

Connor leaned back. His LED flashed blue. He said at his usual announcer’s volume, “I’ll request the files on the Santarelli case.”

“No, you won’t.”

“I’ve requested the files on the Santarelli case,” said Connor.

“God damn it.” Hank nursed his head. After a thought he said, “Santarelli… Victor Santarelli? The drug dealer.”

“Vitale Santarelli.” Hank snapped his fingers and shook the first at Connor as he continued: “He owns two automobile dealerships located downtown.”

“That’s the one! Vitale, yeah.”

“He has no arrests on file.” Then: “An arrest as a juvenile. But that was redacted.”

“Probably some dumb kid shit. Yeah, we never got anything on him, just the guys who sold for him. Shit, Santarelli?” Hank drummed his fingers on the desk. “That android might know something about that operation.”

Connor said, “You want to interview the deviant about Santarelli’s possible criminal enterprises,” and he looked the most curious that the lieutenant had seen him outside an especially bloody crime scene.

“Hell, yeah,” said Hank. “What—you can’t blame the ‘droid for running on fucking Santarelli. If you knew half the shit I heard about the guy. Yeah.”

Connor was looking at him. Connor always looked at the lieutenant. That light at his temple showed yellow, processing. 

“And the deviant? Our job is to detain it. If necessary to return it to CyberLife for diagnostics.”

“Aw, c’mon,” said the lieutenant. “It’s not like the damn thing killed ‘im. What’re we gonna charge the bot with, stealing itself?”

“She did take $50 from Santarelli’s daughter’s piggy bank.”

The lieutenant _pssh_ ed his lips at this. “What model?”

It was the android’s turn to think. Slowly, Connor said, “Including the street value of the android model… The theft is under $1,000.”

“Misdemeanor,” said Hank. “Petty larceny. And who do we charge? Santarelli, ‘cause he owns the android? I say we find her, and we ask her a few questions about his shit, and yeah, OK—” He forestalled Connor’s comments by raising his hands between them. “You can ask about our case, too. OK? All right?”

Connor subsided. He said, “I do have an idea as to where she may have gone.”

“Jericho, again?”

“No,” said Connor, “although that is a possibility. There’s a small automotive parts store managed by Santarelli’s nephew. They recently had a falling out.”

Hank grinned and saluted Connor with his coffee cup. “That’s a hunch.”

“A logical deduction.”

“Intuition.”

“The android might not be there.”

“Might not,” Hank agreed. “And you said ‘she.’ Earlier. When you were talking about her.”

Connor startled: his LED cycled furiously through yellow then red then yellow again. “A simple pronoun mix-up.”

The lieutenant could have noted that Connor’s LED had yet to re-settle on blue. He said instead, “You know, humans, we call that a Freudian slip.”

The long lines in the android’s forehead deepened. He said, “Freud’s theories are widely considered junk science.”

“Now I know I’m on to something,” said Hank. “’Cause you got that pissy little wrinkle between your eyes— That one. Right there.”

Connor felt at the top of his nose with two fingers. His brows arched.

“C’mon.” Hank tossed the coffee cup in the trash. No better cure for a hangover than the thought of nailing that bastard Santarelli at last. “You got those files in your head yet?”

“Yes, the download’s finished.” The android was still feeling at his own face. His expression had not materially changed. Someone would need to infer that it was uncertainty that drove Connor to touch his synthetic features. 

The lieutenant shoved himself bodily up from his seat. The chair groaned. So did his back. Twisting once with his elbows up, he grimaced.

“Great. C’mon, let’s get outta here.” He clapped the android firmly on the shoulder in passing. “Hey, this thing goes okay – that hunch of yours plays out – maybe I’ll even buy you that drink.”

Connor dropped his hand. He fell in alongside Hank. His steps were crisp, his stride even, paced even so to stay very nearly elbow to elbow with the lieutenant.

“I’d like that,” said the android. “And – thank you, lieutenant.” He stepped forward sharply to push open the door before them.

The cold air whisked in through the lobby. The lieutenant hunched his shoulders to his ears. It was the cold was why he did it. It was the cold made his ears red.

“If you’re wrong,” said Hank, as he shuffled by Connor through the door, “and this winds up being some kinda snipe hunt, then you’re buying me a drink.”

“Of course,” said Connor. “But I’m never wrong, lieutenant.”

Hank said, “Says the guy wearing loafers without socks,” and started for the parking lot.

“Lieutenant. You’re assigned to Homicide, is that right?”

“Oh, shit. That why we keep seeing all those dead bodies?”

“So,” said Connor, “you _aren’t_ with the fashion police.”

The lieutenant stopped at his car. He thumped a hand on the roof, over the driver’s side door. He looked over the roof at Connor.

“I’d book you for the tie alone,” he said.

Connor looked back unblinking. With two even hands he adjusted the knot of his tie then, with the left hand, he smoothed the tail flat. 

“I’ve uploaded the address to the GPS,” said the android. He maintained eye contact beyond the farthest reaches of known and unknown necessity. His brow arched. His lips pursed. “Lieutenant?”

Hank popped the driver’s side door. He didn’t have a whole lot to say. The damn ‘droid kept sliding god dang sticks through his spokes, so he’d trip up. 

“Just get in the car, Connor.”

“If you’d like, I could select some music.”

“How about we don’t do that.” Hank reached for the radio. 

Connor got there first. He said, “Allow me to rephrase. I’ve selected some music.” 

“You remember I outrank you.”

“Speaking of technicalities,” said Connor, “I have no rank. I’m something of a consultant, on loan from CyberLife.”

“So you tell me, every day,” said Hank dryly. “Just don’t put on any church shit.”

“Noted.” So the bastard turned it to the local gospel channel, the good one on FM. Fucker, thought the lieutenant; and if he thought it with fondness, then he kept it to himself, as surely as Connor kept his own secrets.


End file.
